


In the Shadows

by Laur



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Author chooses not to give more warnings because spoilers, M/M, More warnings in end notes, No Rape/Non-con, Psychological, some disturbing imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 21:41:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6676411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laur/pseuds/Laur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Do you believe in ghosts?</p><p>
  <em>When Sherlock’s eyes snap to him they are anguished.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written very quickly and is probably pretty rough, but I've had this idea in my head for ages and just needed to get it out.
> 
> Warnings in end notes.

“I’ve a case for you,” Mycroft announces as he enters the flat, ignoring John’s greeting.

“Someone’s desperate,” John mutters and Sherlock smirks.

“Not interested,” he replies, just to see Mycroft’s lips pinch.

Mycroft’s lips pinch. “You’ve nothing on, Sherlock.”

John sighs and goes back to his newspaper. He knows where this is going.

“Not. Interested,” Sherlock repeats succinctly.

“Just take a look at it. Please.”

John looks up in surprise. Mycroft really is desperate. Sherlock’s raised eyebrow indicates he’s noticed as well.

“Leave the folder. I’ll take a look when I can spare the time.”

“The matter is urgent,” Mycroft presses, but puts the folder on the table beside Sherlock.

“If the matter is sufficiently intriguing, rest assured John and I will see to it.”

Mycroft freezes for a moment, just a moment, before moving towards the door, but if John caught it, then surely so did Sherlock.

“It might be above my security clearance, Sherlock,” John says dryly.

“Yes, will John be able to accompany me?” Sherlock inquires.

Pausing at the door, Mycroft turns and gives a polite smile. “John will be more than welcome.”

With that, Mycroft turns and leaves.

*

“That was…odd,” John comments, joining Sherlock on the couch to glance over the already open folder. They really don’t have anything on – they’ve both been bored.

“Yes,” Sherlock agrees, eyes scanning the text at near inhuman speed. He takes more time to analyze the photographs. “So is this case.”

“Moorland Psychiatric Hospital,” John reads, a chill going through him.

“For the criminally insane. One of their patients managed to escape from his apparently locked cell but they can’t find him on any of the security cameras.”

“Did he escape the grounds?”

Pale eyes snapped up to meet John’s. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

*

“Sherlock Holmes,” Sherlock introduces himself, shaking the security man’s man. “And this is my friend and colleague Dr. John Watson.”

The man nods in John’s general direction, but ignores his outstretched hand, his eyes focused on Sherlock. Awkwardly, John lowers his hand.

Sherlock watches this exchange with narrowed eyes.

“Matt Cho,” the man replies. “I’m head of security here. You must be Mycroft Holmes’s younger brother.”

“Yes, I’m here to investigate –”

“The disappearance of Bradly Young,” Cho interrupts. “Let’s not waste time. I’ll show you his cell.”

*

“I worked a rotation in a psychiatric hospital during my training,” John murmurs as they walk the halls, nodding to doctors and staff as they pass. Everything is white and meticulously clean, making John unwilling to touch anything for fear of leaving a mark. Cho uses the identity card around his neck to gain them clearance through certain doors. It reminds John of Baskerville. “I almost dropped out because of it.”

Sherlock gives him a sideways glance. “You found it…upsetting seeing people not in control of their own minds?” he guesses.

“Well, sure, but mostly it was just a downright creepy place,” John admits, shrugging. “All the moaning and screaming, and the dull eyes of the heavily drugged. It really gets to you after a while.”

Sherlock hums and looks away, eyes flicking across the ceiling as they walk.

“How many security cameras have you got installed here?” he asks Cho.

“One in every main doorway and hall. There are ninety-four in total.”

John whistles under his breath. They’ve stopped briefly at another set of doors and John can indeed see a camera in the corner by the ceiling.

“I’d like to see the recordings after this,” Sherlock says.

Cho nods. “We’re entering a patient corridor now,” he warns.

Each cell is contained with a thick plexiglass door and wall on the side facing the hall, making it impossible for the inmate to hide from guards or doctors. As they walk past, some of the patients, dressed in all grey, follow them with lackluster eyes, while most sleep or sit hunched in a corner. One of them moans at the sight of them and jerks away.

John frowns. “They’re all on medication?”

“He’s not a doctor, John,” Sherlock reminds him.

“Oh, you’ll be able to talk to Dr. Sharma, too. She knows more about the patients than I do.”

They stop in front of a cell identical to all the others save one thing – this one is empty. The woman in the cell to the right is humming to herself and rocking on the floor.

“Young was found missing from his cell during a check at oh-two-oh-three last night,” Cho tells them, opening the cell door. Sherlock steps inside and immediately begins checking the bed, the toilet, the walls. “Nothing was noticeable on the security feed until oh-two-thirty, when he appeared to suddenly vanish into thin air.”

“Tampering with the feed,” Sherlock mutters dismissively, glancing at the wall that separates them from the humming woman.

Cho nods. “We’re bringing in a security analyst to take a look at it.”

The humming spikes in volume for a moment and Sherlock grimaces and twitches his head. John raises an eyebrow. “You okay?”

Sherlock glances at him and away. “So how do these doors work?” he demands, stepping out of the cell.

“They lock automatically. Other than the window along the top of the wall there,” Cho indicates to the six inch high window that spans the length of the wall, letting in some natural lighting, “the door is the only entrance. And, as you can see, you’d be hard pressed to fit anything but an arm through that window if you could even manage to reach it.”

“Would you make her stop?” Sherlock snaps suddenly, glaring at the humming woman. 

Cho looks at him in surprise. “She’s only singing.”

It’s some kind of nursery rhyme, harmless enough in John’s opinion. He grips Sherlock’s arm but Sherlock shakes him off. “That song,” he hisses. “It’s distracting. I need to focus.”

“If you’ve seen everything here –” John begins.

At the same time Cho offers, “I could get a doctor…”

“No, I’ve seen enough,” Sherlock says and stalks back the way they came.

*

Sherlock and John stand shoulder to shoulder as they watch Bradly Young blink out of existence on the security footage. One second he’s asleep on his mattress, the next he’s gone.

“Look at the shadows,” John murmurs, as the section of footage repeats. 

Sherlock looks at him in surprise, impressed. “What do you see, John?” he prompts.

“Well, at the cut, I guess, the angle changes by several degrees.”

“Very good,” Sherlock breathes, and leans closer to the screen. “Yes, this was done well – notice there’s nothing amiss with the time stamp – but the shadows give it away.”

They’re silent for a moment, John watching Sherlock think.

Sherlock straightens up suddenly. “This was obviously an inside job. Young could never have gotten out alone. You’ve not let anyone go home, have you?” he demands of Cho, where he stands in the back with the video surveillant.

“Of course not.”

“Good. The competence is refreshing,” he mutters to John, who snickers. “I’d like to begin with the interviews. Young’s doctor first,” he announces. “We’ll take a look at the grounds while you round everyone up.”

*

They start with the plot of ground just outside Young’s cell, but as far as John can tell, there are no footprints, nor any other markings.

“You really think he could have gotten out by the window somehow?”

“It’s unlikely, but best not to assume anything,” Sherlock replies, straightening up from his crouch. “And it gives us something to do while everyone gets organized.”

John follows as Sherlock hunts around the building, head down as he analyzes ordinary-looking tufts of grass, mounds of dirt and crops of weeds. The sun is out, which makes the walk nice enough, so John doesn’t complain.

“Unless it was by a main entrance, there’s no evidence of anyone exiting the building,” Sherlock decides after they’ve circled the entire hospital.

“He’s still inside then? Hiding somewhere?”

“Possible.”

*

Dr. Sharma stares at Sherlock like Sherlock stares at an unexpected chemical reaction. It puts John’s teeth on edge.

“How long have you been Young’s attending psychiatrist?” Sherlock demands, sitting posture-perfect in his metal chair. 

John crosses his legs and leans back as he takes notes.

“Since he first came to us only five months ago,” she replies, eyes flicking over Sherlock’s face.

“What was his crime?”

All this information was in the folder that Mycroft gave them, but John knows that Sherlock likes to hear what people have to say.

“He shot his love interest and then beat his love interest’s wife to death.”

Horrified, John hesitates in his note taking. It is when he hears of tragedies like this, of love gone wrong, that he almost understands the Holmes motto of ‘love is not an advantage’. 

“And his decent into madness was triggered by this event,” Sherlock infers.

“Well, his sanity has always been in question, but the catatonia and random violent outbursts began after the murders, yes.”

“You believe he was mentally unstable before, as well?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Sherlock narrows his eyes and John looks at her curiously. That wasn’t a very scientific response.

When they are finished, Sherlock tells her to let in the next staff member. 

“Wouldn’t this go quicker if you and Dr. Watson split the interviews?” she asks, watching Sherlock’s face with a disturbing intensity.

Sherlock doesn’t blink. “He’s more use to me at my side,” is all he says.

“And I wouldn’t see a fraction of what he does,” John admits.

“I see,” she murmurs indulgently, as if complimenting a child, and turns away. Sherlock makes a face at her back.

Their next interviewee is a Mr. Eric Kaufer, a janitor. His demeanor is sullen and defiant as he slumps in his chair with his hands in his lap, giving only the briefest answers to direct questions.

Yes, he was working last night. No, not in Young’s wing. In a bathroom on the second floor. No, he didn’t see or hear anything unusual. 

“May I see your hands, Mr. Kaufer?” Sherlock asks at one point.

Kaufer frowns. “Why?”

“Oh, just a professional curiosity.”

Reluctantly, Kaufer places his hands on the table. Sherlock reaches out and flips them so they’re palms up, delivers light touches as he angles them this way and that. The hands look ordinary to John, but Sherlock makes a skeptical sound as he pulls away.

“I moisturize,” Kaufer says defensively.

“Yes, I can see that,” Sherlock replies sarcastically. 

John sighs in confusion and jots down ‘ _hands?_ ’ under Eric Kaufer’s name.

The seventh person they see is a night security guard, Linda Rose, a tall, athletic woman.

“I was posted just outside the door, and I swear I didn’t see anything,” she tells them, jaw set. “Kaufer came to change a garbage bin around midnight, but that’s it.”

“Did you ever go into the patient’s hallway?”

“Oh, yeah, every half hour we do a check. Sometimes if one of ‘em are awake I’ll talk with ‘em a bit. Some of ‘em are really quite sweet when they’re drugged to the gills,” she admits, her bottom lip trembling. She bites it and looks down. “They’ve all done awful things, but most of ‘em weren’t aware of their actions.”

Sherlock nods and presses his knuckles to his lips in thought.

“Did you hear any odd sounds?” 

She gives a weak smile. “What would you define as ‘odd’, Mr. Holmes? We hear all sorts of things in the night.”

Sherlock raises an eyebrow. “So you didn’t hear a cell door opening, for example?”

“No, no I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one.” 

*

Night has fallen by the time Sherlock is satisfied with the interviews. The hospital is oppressively quiet, the sounds of their footsteps bouncing off the high walls. John is hyper aware of his own breathing.

Cho gave them a card so they can roam the halls alone and they start at the empty cell again. The woman starts singing the moment she sees them, her voice high and sweet.

_Mary, Mary quite contrary…_

“I don’t know how you’ll find anything here,” John admits, watching Sherlock crouch with his magnifying glass. His shoulders are stiff. “It’s spotless.”

_How does your garden grow?_

“Something is off,” Sherlock mutters, sounding strained. He tries the card on the cell door, but the little light on the lock flashes red. “This whole case…”

_With silver bells, and cockle shells…_

“Know what I noticed?” John crosses his arms and looks around the hallway, trying to will away the gooseflesh on his arms. “They didn’t do a security check on us. I could have brought in my gun, for all they know.”

_And so my garden grows._

“Would you shut up!” Sherlock suddenly explodes, making John jump in surprise. But he’s glaring at the singing woman, not John.

The woman sticks her tongue out at him and begins the rhyme again, louder.

John grabs Sherlock’s arm and pulls him out of the hallway. “Come on, we’re not supposed to agitate the patients.”

“She killed her own parents, John, she doesn’t deserve your sympathy.”

“How do you know that?” John asks and receives an eyeroll. “Never mind, I just don’t want to get kicked out, alright? Let’s keep going.”

The hallways are dimly lit with lamps, their quiet electrical hum seeming to deepen the silence rather than break it, as they try to trace Young’s path based on which cameras were tampered with. They pass several security guards.

“How could he have possibly gotten by without being seen?” John whispers as they enter another patient ward. “There are guards everywhere.”

“I don’t think he went this way.”

“But the cameras –”

“Might have been to shield the accomplice.”

His voice sounds rough and John peers at him. “You okay?” He’s pale and a little clammy.

“Fine.”

“You sure? You look –”

“Just a headache.”

“When was the last time you ate anything? We missed dinner and you didn’t eat on the way here…”

“I’m fine, John! Stop fussing.”

Behind them, someone snickers. 

They both whirl around. A patient is pressed against his plexiglass door, his nose flattened comically and his fingers hooked into one of the three holes in the door. There’s a long scar, still freshly pink, that runs from the bridge of his nose, across his cheek to his ear.

“Oh, John, John, I miss John,” he sighs, looking at the air to the right of Sherlock.

There’s an alarm button on the wall that John eyes. Sherlock takes a slow step towards the patient.

“We used to be good friends, John Watson and I,” he continues, voice melancholy. 

Sherlock stiffens and John feel a shiver run down his spine. “You know me?”

“How do you know John Watson?” Sherlock demands, voice low.

“Well, we were neighbours, don’t you know!”

Sherlock takes another step forward and the man suddenly jerks back, a look of terror morphing his face. “No, no, I’m sorry!” he blubbers, pressing back against the far wall. He shields his face with his hands. “I’ll stop, I’m sorry, I thought this was better, it’s not better, it’s not better.”

Sherlock frowns and then grimaces, pressing a hand to his temple.

“I’m sure they have some painkillers you could use,” John offers, pressing a hand to Sherlock’s slightly damp forehead. 

“You’re offering me drugs?” Sherlock asks sardonically. 

“I know you well enough not to recommend food,” John returns. “And I don’t like seeing you suffer.”

Sherlock’s expression softens before he gestures to the cell. “Have you ever seen this man before?” 

John looks back to the patient, who has lowered his hands and is gazing somewhere at John’s chest level. “No. But they must have access to newspapers? We’ve been mentioned before.”

“Yes, I suppose,” he agrees, but he doesn’t sound convinced. 

*

It’s another half hour before exhaustion has John dragging his feet and Sherlock’s headache is bad enough that he stops to lean against a wall briefly. 

“I think it’s time to call it a night, Sherlock,” John says gently, checking his quick pulse at his neck and sweeping his fringe out of his face. “We can be back bright and early tomorrow morning.”

It’s a testament to how poorly Sherlock feels that he nods and follows as John leads the way back to the main entrance, leaving the sounds of sleeping inmates behind them. They’re nearly back when Sherlock cries out.

John pivots to see Sherlock with a hand clasped over his upper arm, his eyes wide. Backing away from him is Mr. Kaufer, a syringe in his hand.

“What did you give him?” John snarls, lunging for Sherlock as the detective stumbles.

“We had everything under control!” Kaufer spits, watching as Sherlock slides down the wall. “Until your brother decided to conduct his little _experiment_. Don’t worry, Sherlock, it’s just the usual dose.”

Sherlock manages to slap the panic button on the wall as he collapses to the floor, John following him, but Kaufer just sighs in annoyance. John realizes something is wrong when the alarm starts blaring but he can barely hear it, his vision going fuzzy as Sherlock’s eyes roll. Did Kaufer somehow get John, too?

John watches as Sherlock’s eyes slip close, and everything goes black.

*

John comes to slumped in a chair, Sherlock lying in a bed in front of him. He watches as Sherlock blinks a few times and tries to lift a hand, the movement stopped by the restraint holding Sherlock’s wrist to the bed. 

“Good morning, brother,” comes a sigh, and John nearly falls out of his chair in surprise.

“What the hell, Mycroft!” 

Sherlock has gone very tense on the bed and glares at his brother, who is lounging in another chair at John’s side. “What’s going on, Mycroft?”

Taking a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of his pocket, Mycroft lights a cigarette and brings it to his lips, inhaling deeply before exhaling smoke into the room. “Jesus Christ,” John mutters.

“It seems my plan has failed due to a lack of compliance in my employees,” Mycroft says, voice strained. He’s gained weight, John notices by his slightly less defined jaw line. The hand holding the cigarette shakes just slightly, and John is abruptly afraid. “I’m sure you can forgive my frustration.”

Sherlock is beginning to panic on the bed, straining subtly against the straps around his ankles and wrists. John gets up and goes to him.

“John, take these off,” he orders, tugging more sharply.

“Unfortunately, John cannot do that,” Mycroft whispers, his eyes closed.

“What?” Sherlock snaps.

Standing at Sherlock’s side, John clenches his fists, looking down at Sherlock’s pale face. Out of nowhere, his heart clenches with uncertainty and grief.

Mycroft takes a deep breath that shakes. “John cannot free you because John is dead.”

Wide eyes flick to John’s face. “John? Let me up! Were you given something? What happened?”

“How have you progressed with this case, Sherlock?”

Sherlock looks back to his brother, his pulse beating visibly in his neck. John reaches out to run a soothing hand through Sherlock’s curls, smiling when Sherlock leans into the pressure. “It doesn’t make sense,” Sherlock says almost petulantly. 

“Why not?”

“The janitor is not a janitor. The doctor is a doctor but not Young’s. The security guard seemed a likely candidate – she’s terribly upset about something, she sympathizes with the patients. But she was telling the truth. She didn’t see or hear anything odd last night. The cell hasn’t been lived in for a week at least, nobody seems to care that we’re here, and last night I was attacked by a man that claims this was all your _experiment_.”

Mycroft nods and takes another drag of his cigarette. “The case is senseless because there is no case. There is no Bradly Young.”

Sherlock laughs, a harsh sound. John places a hand on his shoulder. “Whose cell is that then?”

“Yours.”

Under John’s fingers, Sherlock’s muscles snap taught and begin to quiver. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” Mycroft says quietly. 

“John, take these off.”

“He can’t.”

“John!”

“Mary Morstan was stillborn in October 1972,” John whispers, stepping back from the bed.

When Sherlock’s eyes snap to him they are anguished. 

Lifting his hands, John watches in fascination as his skin seems to lose consistency, letting light pass right through. Through his hands he can see Mycroft watching Sherlock watch John. 

“Her gravestone is in Chiswick Cemetery…” John stumbles back until his calves hit something solid and he sits. It’s only when he looks down that he realizes there is no chair beneath him – he is resting on thin air. 

Tears are pooling in Sherlock’s eyes and trailing down his temples as he jerks violently against his restraints. A bead of sweat trickles down John’s forehead, but when he moves to wipe it away, the back of his hand comes away bloody.

“ _Sherlock_ ,” he gasps and slumps, falling to the floor and through it.

Sherlock’s eyes roll back as Mycroft bows his head.

_…five years ago, you acquired her name and date of birth and thereafter her identity. It’s an old enough technique, known to the kinds of people who can recognise a skip-code on sight, have extraordinarily retentive memories…_

Sherlock’s in the abandoned house. He’s holding a phone to his ear, and each breath is agony. He’s been shot quite recently – he escaped the hospital, he remembers. Around the corner Mary stands in a narrow hallway and faces her husband, who is disguised as a shadow disguised as Sherlock.

He remembers saying into the phone:

“How good a shot are you?”

She takes the pistol out of her pocket and holds it at her side. “How badly do you want to find out?”

“If I die here, my body will be found in a building with your face projected on the front of it. Even Scotland Yard could get _somewhere_ with that.”

“The police would never find me. I’ve disappeared before, I could do it again.”

“So you lose John, then.”

“If I let you leave here, you’ll tell John,” her voice breaks, “and I lose him anyway. This way, we both lose.” She raises the weapon, points it at shadow’s head.

Panic shoots through Sherlock’s system at her words, the pain in his chest forgotten as he jerks into motion, desperate to reach her. “No! Mary, wait!” As he lunges around the corner, he can picture it, the way John sits frozen in the wheelchair, disbelieving. He won’t move in time.

The gunshot’s report is muffled by the silencer, but the sound still manages to freeze Sherlock’s heart. When he stumbles around the corner, there’s still smoke rising from the barrel. 

Mary turns and her expression crumbles when she sees him. Unable to think, Sherlock doesn’t pause to switch the lights on, just pushes roughly past her, sprinting down the hallway to fall to his knees in front of John. The bullet hole in John’s forehead is dead center, a thick globule of blood making its sluggish way down John’s nose. His eyes are wide open with shock, glassy with death.

Something inside Sherlock is screaming. His whole body is trembling violently, like a chemical reaction about to reach its peak, like a volcano about to erupt, like a building about to collapse. 

Behind him Mary screams hoarsely and grabs Sherlock’s coat collar, yanking him back and forcing him to stand or choke. “How could you?” she sobs. “You tricked me! I killed him!”

Sherlock stumbles to standing before whipping around and backhanding her with all the force in his body. With that first hit, the rage suddenly overflows and Sherlock can’t stop. Mary’s training is superior, but she’s dazed with grief and horror and pregnancy throws off her balance. Sherlock is stronger, taller and rage makes each movement viciously precise. 

He hits her until his fists are bloody and she lies unmoving on the ground, the gun abandoned several feet away. 

Sherlock is suddenly dizzy. The warmth in his lower chest has expanded and agony lances through his core again, dropping him to his knees. He crawls to John and presses his forehead to John’s knees. The material of John’s trousers becomes gradually soaked and the narrow hallway echoes with choked wails. Sherlock does not notice either.

When they find him, Mary is unrecognizable, John is stiff and cold, and Sherlock is nearly dead with blood loss. The first officer on scene scrambles back outside and is sick on the street. 

It is chaos in the aftermath, but Sherlock does not remember any of it.

“Mary’s prints were on the gun,” says Mycroft’s voice.

Sherlock lies on the bed. He cannot see through the moisture in his eyes, cannot breathe through the thickness in his throat, cannot move through the weight pressing him down. 

“But you could have easily staged that. Either way, you are guilty of the brutal murder of Mary Morstan. I could make the argument that Mary Morstan does not exist, but then who shot John? And what of their unborn child?”

Sherlock can breathe again, each breath coming faster and faster as he tries to curl into himself, but he’s pinned like a specimen, like a frog ready for autopsy. 

“You became unresponsive, except for when you talked to John, disturbing the other patients. You got loose and attacked an inmate once, when he told you John wasn’t real. We didn’t know what to do with you. So I orchestrated this farce in the hopes of letting you make the realization yourself. But Dr. Kaufer, one of your doctors, was more bitter than he let on and…”

The sobs punch out of Sherlock’s chest until it feels like he’s drowning. He writhes on the bed, his mind unable to accept the reality that has been forced upon it, a reality where John is dead and Sherlock has destroyed everything John loved.

Cool hands are fumbling open the restraints, freeing his limbs so he can curl on his side to hold the shattering remnants of his chest together. The bed shifts as Mycroft climbs onto the bed and holds Sherlock in his arms, murmuring in soothing tones that do nothing to dissolve this nightmare.

“I know it hurts, little brother,” Mycroft whispers. “But now that you remember, now that you’ve faced the truth, you can come to terms with it. You can get better. Mummy will be so pleased. And Mrs. Hudson, and Molly, and Lestrade…”

Dark curls bounce as Sherlock shakes his head violently. _This is worse!_ He wants to scream, but he’s afraid what sounds will emerge if he opens his mouth.

“All things fade,” Mycroft promises. 

*

Mycroft escapes to the bathroom to compose himself, washing his hands with cold water and pressing his damp hands to his eyes, ignoring the sting of salt. 

At last, after all this time, Sherlock can begin to recover. Now that he is in his right mind, Sherlock can testify in his court case and explain what really happened in that empty house. A plea of self-defense might not be completely unreachable.

More than anything, Mycroft wants to take Sherlock home with him, but the authorities will not permit it. For all that he might now be lucid, Mycroft’s little brother is still a murderer, and is not allowed off the grounds.

So it is alone that Mycroft goes home to begin discussions with his lawyers.

*

It is three days before Mycroft can visit again, and as he walks to the hospital’s entrance, he moves too quickly for it to be considered poised. He receives a visitor’s badge the moment he walks through the doors, but the greeting staff won’t meet his eyes.

“How is he?” he demands, stomach heavy with dread.

Dr. Kaufer steps up to him, his expression somber but for his lips, which have a smug quirk to them. 

_Your experiment was a failure_ , that expression says.

“Show me.”

Sherlock is in a private room again, rather than his cell, but this time he is not tied down. He sits in the chair that his imaginary John had sat, straight backed and staring at nothing. Mycroft kneels in front of him.

“Sherlock?”

There is no reaction, but Sherlock is a very good actor.

“Sherlock, I know you hear me.”

He blinks once slowly, eyes unfocused. 

Mycroft seizes Sherlock’s arms, nails digging in, but Sherlock does not flinch. “Stop it, Sherlock,” he snaps. “This is not a game. You’re not fooling me.” He breathes heavily, heart pounding. He shakes the frail form of his little brother, watching his body sway with the movement. “Stop it. Stop it!” he screams.

Orderlies pour into the room, alerted by his shouting. Mycroft strikes Sherlock across the face, tearing at the unresponsive, dramatic, lying little brat – 

It takes three men to pull Mycroft from the room.

*

“We’ll try a different medication,” Dr. Sharma says gently. “Try to get him back into a routine. Isolation obviously isn’t working.”

Mycroft snorts delicately. “He is guaranteed to go insane with that method. Or kill himself.”

Her lips press together. “He will be under constant supervision.”

He shakes his head. “He’ll find a way.”

*

Sherlock and Mycroft sit side by side on a bench outside, on the grounds. It is likely the last time Mycroft will sit with his brother. Yesterday, Sherlock attacked a nurse. Today, they will begin with the Haloperidol. 

Leaning back and closing his eyes, Sherlock looks oddly content as he fiddles with the restraints around his wrists. 

“Do you believe in ghosts?” he asks.

Mycroft jolts out of his musings, hope blooming in his chest at the sound of Sherlock’s voice. “Why would you ask such a thing?”

“Just answer the question.”

“There are no ghosts in this world, save those we make for ourselves.”

Sherlock nods thoughtfully. “I wonder what’s worse: to be the ghost, or to be the haunted.” 

_All things fade._

Sherlock looks Mycroft in the eyes then, and it takes all of Mycroft’s not inconsiderable self-control to keep his arms at his sides.

With a soft smile, Sherlock stands and shuffles back to his waiting doctors, his stride hampered by the cuffs around his ankles.

_Even people._

“I think I’d rather be the ghost.”

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warnings for:**  
>  Major character death  
> Grief/trauma  
> Loose Shutter Island fusion
> 
> I'd love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
